Monthly Archive for Transportation
Transportation Stories Posted in August 2008
Tax hike for new roads fails to get on ballot
Category: Transportation · State: Arizona · Source: East Valley Tribune
An ambitious statewide transportation measure, championed by Gov. Janet Napolitano and a cadre of Arizona’s most powerful interest groups, has failed to make the November ballot. Secretary of State Jan Brewer announced Monday that Proposition 203, the TIME initiative, had fallen thousands of signatures short of the 153,365 needed to qualify. Nearly half of the 260,698 signatures submitted by last month’s deadline were tossed out. “I am very surprised that a ballot measure ended up with over 42 percent of its signatures being invalid,” Brewer said in a statement. “That is among the largest overall invalid rates that I can recall ever seeing from a citizens initiative drive.” The initiative, backed by business and economic development groups, would have asked voters for a 1-cent state sales tax hike to finance $42 billion worth of freeways, trains, buses and other transportation needs.
T. Boone Pickens' motives in energy plan questioned
Category: Corruption · State: California · Source: Dallas Morning News
Railing against the "club" of Big Oil and promising to shake up "management entrenchment," T. Boone Pickens once turned his epic takeover battles with oil companies into a national effort to make public companies more accountable to shareholders. He modeled his effort on a political campaign - complete with lobbyists, grass-roots supporters and his own money. A corporate raider whose duels with incumbent managers earned him millions, Mr. Pickens became the public advocate of shareholders betrayed by dull corporate bosses. Now 80, Mr. Pickens is again casting business as a "crusade," as a Democratic senator once put it. On commercials and in testimony before Congress, he is urging the country to use more wind power and natural gas - the focus of his own investments - to wean itself off foreign oil.
Anti-rail group revives petition
Category: City Government · State: Hawaii · Source: Honolulu Star Bulletin
Leaders of an anti-rail group say they have collected enough signatures for a petition initiative that could stop the city’s proposed $4 billion rail transit system. They planned to submit it to the City Clerk's Office by 2 p.m. today. Cliff Slater, an organizer of Stop Rail Now, said they had collected about 49,000 signatures as of yesterday, when they made their final rally for signatures outside the organization's South Street headquarters.
Other Monthly Archives for Transportation
- August 2008 (3)